The FOF Restaurant and Market

When I went to the groundbreaking ceremony for the FOF Pork Education Center, I checked out the construction progress on the almost-completed restaurant.

 The restaurant was originally scheduled to open June 1, but now it will partially open late June and fully open to the public on July 1. The building under construction to the right will be a market and bakery, a place you can buy food. Since half the building will have room to host conference dining, there should be a lot of part-time jobs available--conferences are irregular. Hiring has started.

 The chimney of the restaurant may look like it is made of stone, but the stones are only decorative facing.

 Here better view of the market building that is under construction. You can find out more about it and the restaurant from youtube videos here and here. There are pictures of the construction on Fair Oaks Farms Facebook page, such as this one.

 There is an orchard being planted somewhere on the property. The Green Gate Garden encouraged me--my garden is about in the same state.

Fair Oaks Farms is celebrating its tenth anniversary. It has come a long way in ten years. I wonder what it will be like on its 20th anniversary.

Are you ready for the Air Show?

Groundbreaking for FOFPEC

On Wednesday Fair Oak Farms had a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Pork Education Center. The event began with some socializing, then had a number of speakers, the customary posing with shovels, and finally some more socializing.

 There were some snacks available, including these pigs on a stick, which were tasty cookies.

A speaker from Indiana Pork, the director of Agriculture for the State of Indiana, the CEO of the National Pork Board were among those who addressed the audience. I was intrigued by how this building will have a different ownership from the other buildings on the site. The cooperation of a variety of different groups that makes Fair Oak Farms possible is quite amazing and must require a lot of planning and negotiating.

I wonder if I made television news somewhere.

 The press release for the event includes this information:

The 7,000-square-foot Pork Education Center will be built directly to the west of the Fair Oaks Farms Birthing Barn. The center will contain a sky trail ropes course that will contain pig factoids as you reach the higher levels. The center will focus on the many uses of pork products and will be a boarding area for The Pig Adventure bus tours.  

The Pork Education Center will also contain a 600-square-foot distance learning facility for virtual field trips; an interactive area outlining medical uses for pigs; a nutrition and health area discussing pork, recipes and cuts of meat; an area outlining pork use around the world; and an area dedicated to innovations in pig science.

 After the speeches were over, it was time for the ceremonial posing with shovels. Because I delayed walking from the tent to the construction site--I was busy talking with someone--by the time I got to the construction site the participants were turning in their shovels.

 But then several other groupings were assembled for more photo opportunities. You can find some of them on the Fair Oaks Farms Facebook page. (You can see the back of my head in this one.) Here is another series of pictures from the event.

 Construction will begin in the next couple of weeks. Expected completion is February or March in 2015. The Pork Education Center will complement and complete the Pig Adventure. Its goal is the same as the goal of the rest of Fair Oaks Farms, to provide edutainment. The people who are in charge of Fair Oaks Farms are concerned that Americans do not understand where their food comes from and that ignorance is not bliss. People who do not understand the production of food will agree to measures that can be harmful to food production, and in the upcoming years both rising incomes around the world and population growth will increase the demand for protein. That demand will not be met unless the techniques of modern agriculture are used.

One of the big supporters of this new center is the National Pork Board. It gets money from mandatory payments from farmers marketing hogs (the checkoff), and this money is used to promote the consumption of pork. The Pork Board thought that the Pork Education Center was worthy of its support and invested a sizable amount of money in it--one of the largest contributions they have made to something promoting pork.

 Above is what the finished building will look like. Below is a blueprint of what will be in the interior.

 This is another architectural rendering of the building.

This event was not as big as the ceremonial groundbreaking for the Pig Adventure almost two years ago. That one had more politicians and more people. There was the hint of perhaps another ceremonial groundbreaking in a few months--perhaps for a poultry exhibit?

If you want even more information, you can find some here.

A long meeting

The May meeting of the County Council was a long one, lasting over two hours. I got there a few minutes late after a few preliminary items but in time to hear the discussion about whether the web site should be updated weekly. At present people can find their property-tax status on the web (I think here) but the data are only updated three times a year. The Treasurer wanted to know if they could be updated weekly at a cost of $500 per month. However, the discussion took a different turn, and in the end the council decided there was no need to have these records viewable by the public from the Internet (they are still viewable in the Court House at special terminals), so that item will be dropped from the website.

Next was a discussion of the CASA program with Judge Potter. At present juveniles who are suspected of being abused or neglected are required to have either a lawyer or a CASA volunteer assigned to them. Judge Potter argued that having the volunteer was cheaper than the lawyer. The CASA program had been run by Gibault until they left last fall, and then the county took it over. After a lengthy discussion, the council approved an additional $32K to fund the program.

The next big item was a presentation from the director of the Jasper County Public Library. The Library Board approved a proposal to add an insulating decking when the Rensselaer Library is re-roofed this year. The pipes froze because they were placed above the insulation in the ceiling, which looks like a design flaw to me. An architect thought the most cost-effective way to deal with the problem so that they do not freeze again in the future would be to add this decking. (I do not know enough about construction to understand exactly what this decking consists of.) The Library has the money--about $120K--available in its Library Improvement Reserve Fund, but needed Council approval to use that money. The Council approved. 

The cost of repairing the library and replacing materials destroyed in the flood was mostly covered by $254K from insurance.

The Rensselaer Fire Department gave a report on their plans for a new fire station, most of which was a repeat of the presentations that have been given to the City Council. The City Council was hoping that the County Council might contribute to funding the project, but at the end of the meeting, after the presenters had left, the council members showed considerable reluctance to spend any county money on the project. They reasoned that they had not helped other fire departments (such as the Remington Fire Department) in the past and did not want to set a precedent that would encourage future department building to seek their funding.

The Sheriff told the Council that the State Legislature had made major changes to the criminal code, expanding the classes of felonies from four to six. Those convicted of the lowest two classes would no longer be going to state Department of Corrections prisons but would serve their terms in county jails, community corrections, or on home detention. The Sheriff said that the changes would increase the population count at the county level and thus increase expenses. The Department of Corrections wanted these changes, and did a bit of manipulation of the prison population (by shifting people from county jails to the prison system) to get the results that would support their position.

The Department of Corrections did a staffing survey of all county jails and most of them seem to have been deemed short staffed. There is no penalty for being short staffed, but if an incident occurs, the county may bear liability. Jasper County Jail has 18 staff members but the report says they should have seven more to be fully staffed.

The meetings for the Air Show continue and the state police are now aware that they will need to contribute to traffic control for the three days of the air show. There is concern that people will try to pull off to the shoulder of the Interstate to gawk and that will cause accidents. 

A first meeting

The third Tuesday of the month is always a busy time for meetings--the Jasper County Historical Society, the County Council, and the Rensselaer Central School Board often meet at the same time. Tonight the Historical Society started earlier than the others, so I stopped in for a while. I was given a brochure for the Moveable Feast that will be in Rensselaer on August 2, and the relevant part of it is shown below.

If you want to attend the event, you might want to plan to attend an early performance of the Carnegie Players production of Once Upon a Mattress. It will be on stage July 31, August 1 and August 2. (Tryouts are May 27 and May 28.)

Someone had donated some old newspapers to Historical Society, and this item was in one of them, the September 15, 1933 edition of the Chicago Herald Examiner.

 The business meeting of the society had a discussion about the need to get the Society's buildings at the fairgrounds ready for the Jasper County Fair. If you would like to help, their first workday will be May 31 (a Saturday) at 9:00 am. Bring gloves and tools if you have them. Next months meeting will be the annual meeting with a carry-in dinner. It will be June 17.

The main program was about the Midcentury Modern Architecture of Frank Fisher that is in Rensselaer. I left before the presentation, but  Mrs. Kanne, the presenter was kind enough to give me the handout. Fischer designed seven houses in Rensselaer, including his own on Milroy Street, and one commercial building, the Tonner Cleaners at Van Rensselaer and Kellner, which now houses the office of Dr. Balvich. I had never paid much attention to the small building and never realized that it was one of Fischer's buildings.

He also designed seven houses in College Woods and six buildings at Saint Joseph's College: Halleck Center, Schwietermann Hall, and the Bennett, Noll, Hallas, and Gallagher dorms.

The County Council meeting was long and perhaps I will get to it tomorrow. When I left and went home, I noticed that there was a woman's softball game under the lights in the park. It made the evening feel summer-like.

Baby bird

I was surprised to encounter a baby bird in my back yard this morning. It might be a grackle--some were nesting in a nearby tree. (I am sure some of the birders who will be doing a bird walk on Friday morning would be able to identify it.)

With the late arrival of spring and with some trees still not fully leafed out, it seems early for the first brood of birds to be leaving the nest.

In the background you can see a not-so-modern use of solar power.